Headlines News

LONDON (Reuters) - Hilton Group on Thursday agreed to sell its hotels to its U.S. namesake Hilton Hotels Corp for 3.3 billion pounds ($5.7 billion) in an expected deal leaving the UK group with its gambling business Ladbrokes. In mid-October, the UK Hilton first announced it had received an offer from the U.S. Hilton which sources close to the deal then said valued the UK company's hotels at 3.6 billion pounds, but the UK Hilton then sold around 400 million pounds worth of hotel assets. The de ...

LONDON (Reuters) - Mayor Ken Livingstone condemned the RMT rail union on Thursday over its refusal to take part in talks to avert a planned New Year's Eve underground strike. RMT plans a 24-hour stoppage on December 31 -- one of the busiest nights of the year -- and another on January 8/9 in a staffing dispute over safety. London Underground bosses had been prepared to meet the union at the conciliation service ACAS on Thursday but RMT delegates failed to turn up. "Discussions with London Und ...

DUBAI (Reuters) - Al Qaeda in Iraq said it had launched missiles at Israel from Lebanon as part of a "new attack" on the Jewish state, a statement posted on the Web said on Thursday. "The lion sons of al Qaeda launched ... a new attack on the Jewish state by launching 10 missiles ... from the Muslims' lands in Lebanon on selected targets in the north of the Jewish state," said the statement, attr ...

By Peter Graff LONDON (Reuters) - If you have an envious streak, you probably shouldn't read this. Because chances are, Alex Tew, a 21-year-old student from a small town in England, is cleverer than you. And he is proving it by earning a cool million dollars (580,000 pounds) in four months on the Internet. Selling porn? Dealing prescription drugs? Nope. All he sells are pixels, the tiny dots on ...

By Stuart Penson LONDON (Reuters) - The country's biggest gas supplier on Thursday warned of higher energy bills as shivering consumers turned up their heating to stave off freezing weather. British Gas said surging wholesale costs would force all the country's suppliers to raise bills further in 2006 after double digit increases this year. "With wholesale prices where they are, all suppliers a ...

LONDON (Reuters) - Newcastle United midfielder Lee Bowyer will serve a three-match ban after his claim for wrongful dismissal against Liverpool was rejected on Thursday. Bowyer had appealed to the FA's disciplinary commission after being red-carded in Monday's Premier League defeat -- with his ugly challenge on Spanish midfielder Xabi Alonso leading to a melee. The three-match ban starts with im ...

LONDON (Reuters) - Police searching for the murderer of the great grandson of 19th century poet Alfred Tennyson arrested a 44-year-old man on Thursday. Hallam Tennyson, 85, was found dead with stab wounds to the neck and head injuries in his north London home on December 21. "This was a brutal attack on an elderly and vulnerable man," Detective Chief Inspector Tony Nash said in a statement annou ...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Six assailants broke into a house just south of Baghdad on Thursday and killed 11 members of the same Shi'ite family by slitting their throats, police said. They said the family had been warned by insurgents to move out of the largely Sunni district of Latifiya, around 20 km (13 miles) south of the capital, but had not done so. The gunmen arrived at the house in two cars, broke in and bound the hands of the 11 and killed them before driving off, leaving the bloodied bodies  ...

By Muin Shadid TULKARM, West Bank (Reuters) - A Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up when Israeli troops tried to search him at a roadblock in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, killing an Israeli soldier and two other Palestinians. A passenger who had unwittingly shared the same taxi as the bomber said soldiers stopped the car at an impromptu roadblock near the city of Tulkarm and asked young men to get out. "The man got out slowly, closed his jacket and blew himself up," said Nafez S ...

By Nidal al-Mughrabi GAZA (Reuters) - Palestinian security forces hunted on Thursday for a British human rights activist and her parents abducted in the Gaza Strip, but officials reported no immediate progress. Kate Burton, a 25-year-old worker at the Palestinian rights group Al Mezan, was showing her visiting parents around the chaotic southern border town of Rafah when they were kidnapped by gunmen on Wednesday afternoon. Kamal al-Sharafi, head of Al Mezan, said "efforts to secure the relea ...